


They'll Never Find a Happy Home for You

by Deadsettt



Series: My People [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Guardian Angels, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kinda, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s02e16 Blood Must Have Blood Part II, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Survival, at least a version of anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 22:46:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10672329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deadsettt/pseuds/Deadsettt
Summary: With every tally that gets scratched into the cold cave wall, Clarke congratulates herself for not dying yet. There have been a few close calls, but none have managed to kill the mighty Wanheda. It’s a stupid name, Wanheda, but there’s nothing she can do about it now that she hasn’t seen another person in 71 days.-Clarke's alone after the battle of Mt. Weather and trying to figure out how to survive alone; or at least she think so...





	They'll Never Find a Happy Home for You

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a lot of bad things like 
> 
> suicide (implied and directly mentioned)  
> self harm
> 
> basically its clarke in the three months alone in the forest so people with a more delicate disposition might wanna watch out or just not read at all bc its dark from the get go but gets even darker
> 
> also let me know if ive missed any tags and ill add em

The only way Clarke’s been able to keep track of how long it’s been is by the crude tally on the wall. So far there are 71 tally marks – including the nine on her arms. 

 

(She got those before she found her new home)

 

With every tally that gets scratched into the cold cave wall, Clarke congratulates herself for not dying yet. There have been a few close calls, but none have managed to kill the mighty Wanheda. It’s a stupid name, Wanheda, but there’s nothing she can do about it now that she hasn’t seen another person in 71 days. 

 

71 days is a long time to go without human contact, and sometimes Clarke wishes she’d never decided to crawl into the woods. Sometimes she wishes that she’d died on the Mountain; that somehow the radiation had made her skin bubble red and her organs burn black. 

 

Sometimes she wishes she’d fallen into that seemingly frozen river and felt her skin freeze from the icy water and her lungs burn as they desperately tried to find air in water.

 

Sometimes she wishes she’d neatly left her jacket, bag, knife and other items on the edge of the cliff she’d found and let the gusting wind push her so she felt like she was flying.

 

But no. 

 

Clarke has decided to make herself suffer in the worst way. 

 

Staying alive. 

 

Suffering from the biting cold through her worn clothing.

 

Suffering from the blisters on her feet from walking for miles,

 

and miles,

 

and miles,

 

and miles.

 

Suffering from living with the gut wrenching, nightmare inducing guilt of watching and listening as all those people died gasping. As the children screamed in pain and cried for their mothers who clawed at their throats to try and stop themselves choking on their own blood. 

 

Suffering by living with the deaths of 932 people. 

 

And right now, suffered from not being able to find anything to feed her starving body.

 

It’d been around three or so days since she thinks, ~~it’s hard to tell anymore~~ Clarke’s had any kind of food. The last scraps she’s been saving for an emergency are long eaten and she’s reduced to straying out in the freezing wind of the winter to hunt and scavenge. 

 

A quick sip from her canteen shows that she’s dangerously low on water, but thankfully that’s a quick fix. One trip down to the lake to fill up and its sorted. If only it was that easy to find food. 

 

The furs clinging to her body do little to save her from the biting wind, her pale skin raised with rough bumps and shaking so hard her teeth chatter in her head. Cold this extreme is something Clarke’s never felt before. On the Ark it was all one temperature all the time. They never had the sun beating down on them in the summer and tanning their pale skin. They never had icy northern winds making their clothes damp and cold leaving them shivering to the bone. 

 

Sometimes Clarke wishes for her old life back on the Ark. 

 

After what seems like hours and hours of walking, a small rabbit is digging in the frozen earth, probably looking for food, too. 

 

Raising her crudely made bow, Clarke steps like a ghost through the lonely trees and takes aim, lining up her quivering hands to the rabbit’s eye. 

 

If Clarke actually hit the rabbit, she’ll never know.

 

A splintering pain erupts in her head and she lets out a silent shout of pain, a whimper getting lost on the wind. There’s a dull pain in her ankle and her throbbing mind realises she fell over something, a stray stick most likely. 

 

~~Damned trees.~~

 

The pain is welcome, though. It reminds her that she’s still alive, that the frost hasn’t killed her and she isn’t lying under a tree somewhere reliving her life in those seven seconds. What is unwelcome, however, is the darkness gathering around her vision. It’s scary and Clarke tries to fight it, because as much as she’s suffering, she doesn’t want to go. Try and she might, her vision gets darker,

 

darker,

 

darker,

 

dark. 

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

The tally on the wall reads 76.

 

Clarke’s head throbs as she tries to remember when she scratched the new lines, new days of her self-isolation. She can’t remember and she cries because she might actually be crazy. She doesn’t want to be crazy. Desperately she digs through the memories in her head and tries to remember if her numb fingers picked up that cold rock and scraped and scratched along that rough surface to make five smooth lines. 

 

But she can’t.

 

She only cries. 

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

79.

 

It’s been 79 days since Clarke walked away from her family, her friends, her home. 

 

Now Clarke doesn’t feel so crazy anymore because she remembers her numb fingers scratching three lines into the wall. It’s a personal achievement she’s proud of and wonders if her friends and family would congratulate her on it. They wouldn’t, but Clarke can imagine. 

 

Since waking up in her cave, things are different. There’s a pile of furs draped over one another by the fire she never put there, a fire burning and giving the cold walls warmth she never lit, and a pile of dry wood she didn’t cut. Even better than all of that is the bag of food propped against the cave wall, filled to the brim with raw meat that’s begging to be cooked. 

 

It all makes her feel crazy.

 

Clarke’s grateful, though. More than anything she wants to find the kind soul who has helped her and thank them over and over and tell them how impossibly grateful she is. However, her helper has chosen to remain anonymous. 

 

Every night, once Clarke’s stoked the fire to stop her bones from shaking in her skin, she cooks two pieces of meat from the bag. One she paces herself to eat, tearing small pieces off with her fingers to stop herself from eating fast enough to get a stomach ache ~~some nights it’s hard to pace herself.~~ The other piece is left on a clean skin by the cave entrance, a gift, a thank you to her saviour. Its small, but it’s the best she can do.

 

The pile of furs she makes her bed on every night is warm, so incredibly warm and Clarke loves it. No more does she have to wake up in the middle of the night freezing because the cold has seeped through her quickly threadbare jacket. It’s so warm that her jacket is now discarded by the wayside, too warm surrounded by her fur to be of any use. The only time the warmth is a problem is when Clarke wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming, crying, hyperventilating. 

 

It’s the only thing her stranger hasn’t helped her with, her nightmares. There’s no one that can stop the memories each night. Some nights its worse than others, other times her only reprieve is watching the flames flicker until the sun rises. 

 

Clarke’s a big enough person to admit that her nightmares actually terrify her to her core. How those people, those _kids_ cry and scream as their flesh boils and they choke on their own blood. 

 

How their charred eyes stare at her as she looks over the carnage she caused.

 

Wanheda, indeed. 

 

Even awake it doesn’t stop. 

 

Out of the corner of her eye she’ll see Finn, hole in his chest and all, staring at her.

 

Under a bush a woman with blistered red skin curled around her child with matching scars.

 

All around her, the howls of the dead cursing her, screaming insults, 

 

_Murder!_

_You could’ve saved us!_

_It’s your fault!_

_I’m sorry, Clarke._

 

It’s enough to find herself curled up in a ball on the ground sobbing her eyes out, unsure of how much time has passed or even where she is. 

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Out of all her days on the ground, 87 is the one most hazardous to her health.

 

The gash on her arm she got from a particularly angry panther a few days ago is healing nicely, or at least as nicely as she can tell, her vision hasn’t been good the past few days. The panther aforementioned is lying in the coldest part of her cave, waiting to have a few strips of meat taken off it. She skipped eating before going out because she felt sick and eating only made it worse.

 

While the meat is good, it needs something else to go with it, and Clarke had seen the perfect addition a few days ago. It was small bush, but it had some of the best berries Clarke had ever seen on it, and she needed something more to add flavour to her regular meals. 

 

Her feet walked silently on the cold earth, a skill she’d been forced to master a long time ago if she wanted to be able to eat. The wind howled through the trees and Clarke found herself caught up in the noise to realise she’s walked past the bush with the berries. Her silent feet made it all the way to the frozen river before she realised she’s gone too far. With a huff she turns on her heel back towards the bush. 

 

Clarke concentrated on looking for the berry bush now, determined not to miss it again. It was embarrassing enough the first time without it happening again. So concentrated Clarke is on finding the bush she doesn’t notice that the usual noises of the winter forest having gone quiet. The only thing she notices is how the world dips and spins, forcing her to stop against a tree and wait for the world to stop spinning.

 

Clarke doesn’t notice the arrow buried into the tree as she stumbles away. 

 

Finally, the berry bush comes into view again, and Clarke lets out a grateful sigh. Now to collect the berries and she’ll be well on her way to burying herself in her furs and not leaving her cave for a few days. 

 

Just as she falls to her knees in front of the bush, a sharp pain explodes in her shoulder. Stumbling back, a haunting scream echoes through the forest as her hand comes up and knocks the arrow embedded deeply in her shoulder. Suddenly, black shadows pop up all around her, like vengeful ghosts ready to take retribution. It all reminds her very much of her dreams, how they advance slowly, stalking and playing with their food. Clarke stumbles back, eyes hot and blurry with tears of pain, shoulder burning as if a blazing arrow is embedded in her flesh. Her hand scrabbles for the knife at her belt, but even she knows she can’t defend herself in this state. 

 

She’s going to die.

 

But no, since when has that stopped her? Wanheda, right? Well, the least she could do is go down swinging. 

 

Grasping at nothing, Clarke lifts herself to her feet, groaning in pain as the arrow moves in her shoulder, left hand wrapped tightly around her knife. The world tilts but somehow Clarke manages to stay upright, blurry eyes darting to one shadow, then another, then another, trying to keep an eye on all of them at once. Her hazy mind counts at least four shadows, but Clarke knows better than to trust her judgement right now. 

 

Vaguely Clarke hears someone shouting, what, she’s got no clue, but it seems as if it makes the shadows shrink slightly, as if the voice is poison to them. But as much as they shrink, they start to move closer, faster than her mind can process and suddenly she’s knocked over ~~if it was caused by a shadow or gust of wind she doesn’t know.~~

 

Clarke lands with a thud and a grunt of pain, hands immediately coming up to cover her face protectively. There’s a weight on her legs that doesn’t let her move and Clarke starts to panic, chest tightening and desperately trying to fight whoever is on her. 

 

It takes a lot for Clarke to panic like this, even when she thought that panther was going to kill her she didn’t panic, not even when the tally marks appeared on the wall without explanation. 

 

But this, this is different. Clarke can feel the blade pressed against her throat, can feel the overwhelming feeling that this is what’s going to be her undoing. While all she can see is a blurry shadow on top of her, she can feel the heavy winter armour on the ghost, _person_ , who is trying to kill her, and it’s scary.

 

Very scary.

 

Terrifying. 

 

As much as she fights, her body is too weak to unseat the ~~ghost~~ person. The panic grows thicker in her throat and the blade pushes harder, more voices being blown away by the winter wind. Its close enough for Clarke to know that the voice is coming from whoever is on top of her, and the other seems far away. 

 

The knife presses harder and Clarke can feel her body weaken its already weak fight; the shadow becoming even blurrier which only makes her panic more because she doesn’t want to leave, not yet. 

 

Not like this. Not without…

 

A strangled cry leaves Clarke’s throat as the person on her violently tumbles to the side, knocking the arrow in her shoulder. There’s something warm on her neck and shoulder, even running down her face, and Clarke doesn’t have to see to know what it is. 

 

Through the odd tingly feeling in her skin, Clarke feels a weight on her upper arm, the other on her cheek. These touches don’t seem violent like before, but they’re filled with an urgency Clarke doesn’t understand and she tries to fight it. Try as she might, her body gives out on her, her world becoming darker,

 

darker again,

 

swirling, fading, falling,

 

deeper, darker, 

 

green, black.

**Author's Note:**

> Keep your eyes peeled for Part 2 coming very soon...
> 
>  
> 
> also hate me @deadsetttt on tumblr


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